The 10 Best Patriots Moments of 2023: No. 9

Our offseason countdown continues with the ninth-best Patriots Moment of 2023.

Free agency has died down a bit this week after a fairly wild opening salvo across the league. The New England Patriots signed some players, re-upped some guys currently on the roster, and at this point are turned more towards the draft and filling out the back end of the squad with the depth guys that won’t really make much news.

So, it’s a good a time as any to continue with our offseason countdown.

We just knocked off the ninth-worst moment of 2023, so time to cross back over to the sunny side of the street with a good one.

The Patriots only won four games last year, so a number of these good moments are going to come out of losses. Today is one such moment.

But first, the list so far:

10. The Patriots draft Christian Gonzalez

At Number 9, something you don’t really see much at all in this current version of the NFL, so when it happens, you have to take notice.

9. Jabrill Peppers truck-sticks Davante Adams to set up a Jahlani Tavai interception

Week 6 of the 2023 season saw the 1-4 Patriots travel to Las Vegas on the heels of one of the more embarrassing stretches in the entire history of the franchise. After a promising win over the New York Jets, the Pats got absolutely smoked by the Cowboys and Saints in back-to-back weeks to all but end the season. If New England was going to have any hope at all of salvaging things, they needed a W here in the worst way.

Unfortunately for the Patriots, they weren’t able to get that W, falling 21-7 and swaying even the last of the fan holdouts over to the 2024 mock draft sites. However, for a good portion of this game, the Patriots were right in it, in no small part because of an early-game play.

After New England answered Vegas’s 16-play, 69 yard, eight-minute opening field goal drive with a three-play, 1-yard flop that took less than a minute off the clock, the defense had to go right back out on the field before they even had a chance to sit down and take a brief load off. To make matters worse, Bryce Baringer shanked the punt, setting Vegas up at their own 40 with a chance to keep the scoring onslaught of the last two weeks alive and well.

And it looked like the Raiders were right on their way to the end zone. In four short plays, the offense drove from the 40 all the way down to the Patriot 19-yard line with the chance to go up 10-0 and possibly put the game away.

(side note: 10-0 usually meant the game was completely out of reach in 2023. Wild.)

On 2nd-and-9, Jimmy Garoppolo his Davante Adams on a short in-cut, which he caught at the 16-yard line as made the turn towards the sticks.

Waiting for him like a brick wall painted to look like a tunnel in a Road Runner cartoon was Jabrill Peppers, all 220 pounds of him.

In an absolutely perfect, textbook hit, Peppers lowered his pads, slammed into Adams right at chest height, and completely leveled the star receiver into the ground. As the two men collided, the ball popped directly up into the air, where linebacker Jahlani Tavai was able to pull it in for the pick.

Everyone on the planet who saw that play was just waiting for the flag. Hitting a defenseless receiver or unnecessary roughness or some other nonsense like that. But no flags hit the field, and it was New England’s ball. Still only down 3-0, they had a chance to get some momentum back and get on the board.

They didn’t, of course — the ensuing drive was the classic 1-yard gain, 2-yard gain, huge sack for a loss, punt that we all got so used to last season and the Raiders made it 10-0 on the very next drive to put the game away — but that Peppers/Tavai hit represented the first decent thing anybody on this team did in weeks, and it was a total “spark” moment that more competent teams would have rallied around. In a complete desert of ineptitude, it was a legit highlight reel moment that gave us all some hope, even if only for a little while.

And not for nothing, that was just an awesome hit. A classic big play, this-is-why-we-watch hard hit from a powerhouse safety that used to happen all the time in the NFL. NFL Films used to have half hour specials dedicated to nothing but hits like those. Ultimately the decision to move away from hits like this one is a good thing, as player safety has become much more of an issue these days… but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me miss watching football in the 80s and 90s. So for the nostalgia factor, and for the awesome play factor, here I have it at No. 9.

Check out the play here. Full game highlights here.